Anyone here diagnosed as Borderline?

[Ales2]

Okay, so the short is - the therapist I didnt like and kind of battled with - the one who was an expert on NMother issued finally gave me my diagnosis and one of them was Borderline Personality Disorder. Others were Delusions - persecutory type and Dysthmia (low grade depression).

Here is the quick backstory.
It took 5 years for me to get this diagnosis.  I never got it verbally while I was in therapy. Its part of my issue with him and why I dont think I got the help I needed and deserved. I had to take him to small claims (case was never heard) and complain to the Board of Pysch (case closed due to lack of evidence - i.e the diagnosis I was fighting for... IRONY) to even get anything. This explains the Delusions...persecutory type. Its his defense against my claims.

Dysthmia .. I agree with but that was like saying Im a redhead. Easy to spot unless you are blind.

Now, about the Borderline diagnosis. Here are the reasons I think its not correct and would be worried if it was:

1. diagnosis is biased, based on the fact I got it after I filed a small claim. I also think he is picking a diagnosis that will serve his defense if I filed a lawsuit or other action. See the problem here? Can I trust the diagnosis is accurate or is it retaliatory and a defensive move?  He has a lawyer BTW who wrote me a nasty letter because I complained.

2.  Its only a snapshot of where I was in time - I can see why he would think that way on some of the 9 criteria, but I lived with a borderline roommate in college and I have nowhere near those problems. He met me at an incredibly low point and of course, I shared my insecurities, anger, frustrations with relationships and losses with him to solve things, not get mired in more negativity which is what our sessions were.  I lost a job, a cat, my savings - job loss/crash of 2008, a boyfriend split up, discovered my mother was an Ns, same as the boss who laid me off and two close friends up and moved away - all in a 6 month period. While we mostly focused on the work and mother issues, those were the the factors going on in my life. Who wouldn't feel depressed in a collapsing world. I was honest and vulnerable with him about all my feelings and somehow I could tell he did not empathize with anything I went through. He always made me feel like I was some sort of insecure brat. I should have seen this as invalidation, which is what it felt like.

Anyway, on one level I can laugh it off - his diagnosis does not define me and based on my experience with that roommate, I have trouble thinking thats me at all.  But, if that is what he *truly*  (i.e no bias based on our ongoing conflict) felt my diagnosis was - I would want to be open to improvement and would seek out someone new.  Its also possible, he really was the wrong therapist and could not help me with or without BPD.

My question to you all is - anyone here been diagnosed BPD? Did you get the diagnosis before or after you knew about NPeople and possible the BPD is response to that?

[Hopalong]

Hi Ales,
Diagnoses are both hard and a relief, in my experience.
However you assimilate this info, I wonder whether trying this type of therapy would be worth your while regardless?

http://psychcentral.com/lib/dialectical-behavior-therapy-in-the-treatment-of-borderline-personality-disorder/

Hops

[Ales2]

Thanks Hops. I read this book along time ago from Marsha Linehan who discovered it. I think Dr. G posted a couple of years back Linehans article where she "comes out" and admits that in her post-adolescent, early college years she was diagnosed as a Borderline. Interesting link, thanks.

[sea storm]

I haven't been diagnosed as a Borderline.  Diagnoses are very helpful and hard to swallow. I  have a diagnosis of PTSD. That seems more socially acceptable.
This is  a psychiatric  term.  There may be parts of this diagnosis that are applicable and helpful.  The dynamic of suing your psychologist must be a pretty volatile one. I have never heard of anyone doing this. I would think it caused him no end of grief and threatened his livelihood. It could result in him losing his license.  So he naturally would label you BPD.

There are many times when I have behaved in a borderline kind of way.  So did Princess Diana.  Weeping, yelling at certain people, feeling lost, volatile, love em and or hate em. That sort of thing. If I was labelled that I would feel awful. That isn't helpful.
Therapists, including myself, tend to label people BPD who are difficult to deal with and they often end up going from therapist to therapist because they are too hard to get along with.

It can be a starting point for learning new ways to behave in the world  if your life is unmanageable.  The first thing is to admit it isn't working for you in the first place.  Changing behaviour is very difficult if you aren't committed to change.l The attitude that it is all the world's fault or it is all someone else's fault isn't helpful. 

I am in AA and that is teaching me a better way to live.

Sea

[sea storm]

I don't understand why it took five years to get a diagnosis and why you were so invested in getting a diagnosis.
A psychologist can easily give you a MMPI assessment to find out what category you fit in.  It might help you to look online at the explanation of your diagnosis.

I knew a woman who was a passionate, intelligent and lovely Irish person.  Her ex and she were battling in court for custody of their only child. She went into court and behaved like a frantic, crying, outraged, cursing establishment hating, wronged woman.  It kind of amazed me that she didn't realize that she was not entitled to her feelings in the courtroom.
I came out and said don't act like a crazy woman in court or you will lose. She thought I was horrible for saying it.
Her husband probably was a Narcissist and he defrauded her of her 900.000 dollar inheritance. So now the creep has their son full time, their waterfront home and she lives in a basement apartment on social assistance and she is shattered. The husband was a genius at gaslighting and he tapped her phone and sabotaged her car. He even volunteered at the child's school and tarnished her reputation with the teacher and principal. She can't leave the country to visit her parents and sisters.  something like that.
This woman could be labelled as having a personality disorder and she feels persecuted.  For good reason.
I hate to think that some psychologist who didn't know better would diagnose her as borderline. And yet she behaves that way. Maybe I am a feminist when I say that circumstances can push a person right over the edge. She feels she has no one she can trust and that there is no hope. It makes her behave like a banshee to her utter
self destruction.
The last time I talked to her, she could only focus on the custody of her son. And blame her husband. Most people would see her as having lost her balance emotionally. Labels miss the poetry, the story, the context of a tragedy.

You describe having a series of traumatic attacks happening in sequence that brought you to your knees.  I know what that is like. I tried to make sense of it and wondered why it happened to me and what my fatal flaws were. This was not helpful in the end.  I had to let it go. To let the people and events go so that they did not have the power to drown me or destroy the rest of my life. There was no fixing any of it. I regret that I did not turn my back on the past and was stuck in a fierce whirlpool that went nowhere except down.

There are probably lots of psychologist's who have not experienced the kind of emotional rape you are talking about.

[Overcomer]

This is interesting.  During my "break down" at 42 I was a yelling, slamming doors, hysterical, depressed person and my mom's psychologist labelled me as Borderline.  That hurt because the real thing that was happening was my reaction to being "raised" by a controlling narcissistic person.

Later I emailed the psychologist and point blank told him he did not do his due diligence and based his diagnosis of me on her description of me.  I told him if he had listened to me and heard both sides of the story he may have figured out that she was a narcissist who gaslighted me and had everyone believing I was the problem.

To this day nmom keeps her mouth shut and never EVER lets anyone but me and my brother (and my kids) see the real her.  She just got remarried after we lost my dad and I think her husband is probably learning the hard way what a bitch she can be!!  She probably makes it all better by screwing his brains out!!!  (My brother told me she has always used sex to control our dad.......he is 5 years older than me so saw a lot more than I did growing up....)

Now I just smile and nod.  I don't muddy the waters around her.  She often talks about how it is so nice that we are better after we had such a rough patch.........to me it wasn't a rough patch it was me breaking free from the straight jacket life I had with her!

[sea storm]

Who wants to be a borderline?   Nobody. This is not  a label to be thrown around. So often people who are abusing others label the person nuts or out of their minds or borderline. One the other hand god help the person who is involved with a person who is genuinely borderline. It would be a rough ride: one minute being treated like a princess and the next like the creature from the Black Lagoon.  Because of their deep insecurities and suffering they sometimes feel entitled to rip the rug out from under people. Launch law suits, defame them, yell at them and demand to be heard. Volatile and easily triggered.

As for Borderline being a label that sticks with someone for life, I don't think feminists are rallying around validating that idea. If we lived in a more cohesive, validating and connected culture that showed compassion for victims and people who have been mauled by life there would be a different paradigm altogether. I read an article by Sebastian Unger in Vanity Fair and he talks about  post traumatic stress in soldiers.  In other cultures soldiers go through the horrors of war and are healed from the horror by returning to their cultures that are nurturing and loving.  Soldiers are happier at war, than in coming home to the emotional dessert of our culture.
Maybe "borderlines" are the canaries in the cold mine who signal a culture that is not supportive. Try being loving as a school teacher. Is it validated or is their constant pressure to keep up the stats and demonstate progress, set up impossible goals and march the kids through what you know is a destructive scenario designed to produce conformity?

If your mother says you are borderline .......... your mother is a very sick puppy. Don't think about it for one second. Jetison the whole thing. The psychologist was out to lunch probably bending over backwards to validate your mother. There is no making sense of this kind of behaviour. You can only survive by not buying into the whole thing.

I don't know how you just smile and nod. This is very hard stuff to take. What is the price of just smiling?  If you are a genuine buddha goddess ok but otherwise .... what are you really feeling and thinking. I know I do this too, just to get along.  Somehow I know it isn't good for me. I go out and eat a whole pumpkin pie or drive through a stop sign.

Sea

[Ales2]

Sea -  I complained about his conduct and treatment and suddenly I had a "diagnosis."  I may/may not have BPD. ( I can recognize some traits I have that my apply, but I lived with a borderline and that is completely different than what I have done or experienced). It may be a legal defense, but now he has to explain to the Board why he never diagnosed or treated me and why it took me five years to get a diagnosis. All I wanted was closure - which I got.


Overcomer - I hear the underlying issue in BPD is invalidation and for Children of NParents, when therapists with myopic vision cant see all the stressors and can misdiagnose BPD.